Tag Archives: Lachenalia glaucina

Bulbs of September

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Hippeastrum aulicum – we plant it in semi shade to shaded areas because it will still flower and the dreaded narcissi fly only attack plants in sunny spots

Maybe I will do a monthly post on the bulbs in flower here during each month, I thought in August. I am pretty sure that we have bulbs, corms and tubers of one sort or another flowering twelve months of the year. But August came and went and here we are, well into September and peak spring.

Hippeastrum aulicum

Ah well, there is always some crossover. The narcissi and the Hippeastrum aulicum both started in August and are still in full bloom. The aulicums bring us great pleasure and are a significant feature as winter breaks to spring in our garden but are probably beyond the reach of most people. It is not that they are difficult to grow but they are not widely available and, purchased individually, they will be expensive. Mark’s dad probably started from one or maybe three bulbs, as was his and now our way, and the results here have been achieved over about seventy years of quietly lifting, dividing and planting around the garden, now with many hundreds of bulbs in various locations. Not every gardener has the time, patience and willingness to achieve this, let alone the longevity of stay in one garden location.

Narcissus Twilight

The narcissi are more achievable and will give a quicker result. We grow as many different types as we can, bar the modern hybrids (the King Alfred types) that are most commonly sold. They are better as cut flowers (the weight of the bloom often bends them over in the garden) and are better in places that don’t have issues with narcissi fly. We favour the earlier flowering dwarf narcissi. Growing a range of different species, named hybrids and seedlings raised here on site extends the season into many weeks from early August right through September.

Narcissus cyclamineus seedlings growing on one of our bulb hillsides

We use narcissi everywhere really, the major consideration of sites being that they won’t get swamped by larger growing plants and that they will star as rays of sunshine in their time each year.

Lachenalia aloides

The lachenalias also star through spring. It is the boldest and the brightest that bloom first. Lachenalia aloides is the common form that is widely grown. Cheap and cheerful, might be the best description. Placement is everything when it comes to this bulb. I don’t like it as a garden plant but I think it is great on the margins and in wilder areas.

I am officially giving up on trying to understand the plant classification and nomenclature of lachenalias. Last time I looked, these were all forms of the species L. aloides. I even staged a photo to support my comment that a single species can be very variable. So we have straight aloides, quadricolor (already passing over – it is even earlier), tricolor, vanzyliae and glaucina which was barely opening a week ago. Now I look and I see they have been split. Glaucina is back with L. orchiodes, while quadricolor and vanzyliae seem to have been elevated to the status of being in species classes of their own and I have no idea where tricolor sits. They can remain a mystery for me.

Lachenalia glaucina

From a garden perspective, I always notice that it is the orange, yellow and red lachenalias that flower first (the yellow being Mark’s reflexa hybrid, the red we have is bulbifera). The most desirable so-called blues come later. I say so-called blues because that casual grouping takes in those with the faintest blue genes that are really shades of cream, pink and lilac as much as pure blue. We have gathered every one we could find over the years and by far the most reliable is the aforementioned L. glaucina.

And without writing a book on topic, I can only continue by listing bulbs that I spotted on a perfunctory wander around the rockery and areas where we have done informal swathes of different bulbs. We find the bulbs add depth and detail which we value highly.

A touch of grape hyacinth is enough. Seen here with Narcissus Tete a Tete.

We are not too snooty about the common bulbs. While the snowdrops finished last month, the undervalued snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) flower on. We are thinning out both the grape hyacinths (muscari – foliage to flower ratio too high in our climate and spreads a bit too much) and bluebells (way too invasive) but not aiming for total eradication.

Once was dipidax, then onixotis but now, apparently a wurmbea
Seedling anemone

The blue anemones seed down and have quietly naturalised in the rockery without being a problem. I once planted a couple of bags of anemones and ranunculus and they all flowered the first year. From then on the ranunculus, the double anemones and all colours except blue quietly faded away but I like the simple blue and I like even more that they are self-maintaining. The Wurmbea stricta which we used to know as an onixotis and before that was a dipidax is another common bulb but one without a widely-used common name so most often greeted with words to the effect of “Is that what it’s called? My mother used to grow that – I never knew its name.” Dutch iris are another early spring option. I like my blue ones but I am not a particular fan of the family generally.

The blue moraea villosa are the most desirable but the white with blue eye are the most common

There is a large group of somewhat messy bulbs that are terrific in flower but their seasonal foliage is often dying, either just before they bloom or while they are in flower. So they are not nice, tidy, neat bulbs but they are generally showy. The Moraea villosa float like ethereal eyes of the peacock feather, moving in the breeze and they are a delight, even though I may feel irritation at their messy foliage in a few weeks’ time. The freesias (plain cream ones here), sparaxis, valotta, tritonia, Gladiolus tristis and babianas all fall into the same category and are flowering now. We grow them all, but more in the rockery for choicer ones and in meadow plantings for vigorous ones. Their foliage issues are less intrusive than in a tidy border planting.

Unlike the Dutch hybrids, Tulipa saxatilis just keeps quietly increasing and returning to bloom every year

Tulips – we don’t grow the Dutch hybrids but we are enamoured with the Cretan species Tulipa saxatilis. And we have a dainty yellow species that may be a form of T. sylvestris, or it may not. Amongst Mark’s parents’ slides, there was a photo of it in the newly constructed rockery so around 1952 or so. Amusingly, seventy years on, we still have it but only in similar quantity to that in the early photo. It is clearly not going to naturalise and reproduce much here.

We know this is a very early photo because the rocks have not a skerrick of moss or lichen on them.
Ferraria crispa

Then there is the Ferraria crispa, the starfish iris which is only worth the space if you are fascinated by oddities and freaks. Erythroniums, dog’s tooth violets which prefer colder, drier winters, are a seven to ten day wonder with us but charming and dainty for that time and no bother for the rest of the year. Veltheimias in pink and in cream are a mainstay for us in both sun and shade, the pleione orchids are coming into flower and Hippeastrum papilio has opened its first blooms – I could go on.

Why did I start with the month that is probably the busiest of the year in the varied world of bulbs? There will be more that I have missed. If I end up having to retire to a very small town garden, there will be no roses, lavenders or easy-care mondo grass. I am pretty sure I will be growing bulbs.

The rockery is at its busiest at this time of year

The later flowering lachenalias

Left to right, probably arbuthnotiae, aloides tricolor, aloides vanzyliae, glaucina x 2, mutabilis, what came to us as carnosa but probably a hybrid, don’t know (or can’t remember) and contaminata – a round up of some currently in flower this morning 

Back in August 2015, I wrote what I called part one about lachenalias, covering the early bloomers.  It has taken me three years but I return with part two on the late bloomers. Back in our days of putting out a mail order catalogue, we used to offer a range of over a dozen different lachenalias, all but one or two being species, and we gathered up every different one we could find for the garden. By the way, our last mail order catalogue went out in 2003 (yes! 2003!) so we have long since stopped supplying plants. If you are in New Zealand, try Trade Me which is one of the last places you can source some of these less common bulbs.

In the years since, some have proven themselves in the garden and others have faded away. The early season varieties in that first post are all easy and reliable as garden plants (L. bulbifera, L. aloides quadricolor, L. aloides var. aloides and Mark’s L. reflexa hybrid). Others are best kept in pots if you want to ensure their continued survival.

Lachenalia glaucina flowers, nestled in amongst the foliage of narcissi which have already finished blooming. The lachenalia’s foliage is much sparser and close to the ground

In the blues the absolute stand-out is Lachenalia glaucina, or at least the good forms of it. It can throw a lot of seedling variation. It was difficult as a nursery plant, partly because it was frost tender and we were growing the bulbs in open conditions, not under cover. Over the years, it has become one of most successful varieties in the garden – in an understated sort of way. I used to encourage less experienced gardeners to choose L. mutabilis instead because it was much easier and more reliable, while still a good blue. Now I can tell you that it was easier in a pot.  I am not even sure that we still have it growing in the garden. I rounded up one somewhat moth-eaten flower from a bulb that is struggling on in the heap where we dump our used bark potting mix. The other blues we used to grow like unicolor, mediana, and ‘Te Puke Blue’ have not thrived in garden conditions and the only plants we have left are in Mark’s covered house, where only he ever gets to see them. The same with the beautiful cream lachenalia with the terrible name of L pustulata (on account of its warty leaves).

Lachenalia aloides tricolor and aloides var. vanzyliae

Lachenalia aloides is an interesting species. It gives us the most common of all lachenalias in New Zealand – the strong growing orange and yellow one that looks as if it should be sold amongst the fake flowers at The Warehouse. That form has finished flowering for the season, as has its four-coloured variant, quadricolor. But look at these two late flowering forms of same species. L. aloides tricolor is a combination of green, yellow and red, finer in form than the usual aloides. It is easy to grow and reliable. And then there is L. aloides var. vanzyliae – surely the most desirable of them all and also the most unreliable. Ain’t that just the way? Who wouldn’t want a big patch of this little charmer in pristine white with highlights of aqua blue and lime green? It is at least still growing for us but I would hardly describe it as flourishing.

The other two from the top line-up that have proven to be easy and reliable here as garden plants are creamy L. contaminata (it has naturalising potential) and the pink one that came to us L carnosa but Mark thinks is a hybrid.

As always, it is the detail that gives us delight in our garden, not just the big pictures.

Glorious glaucina – the best performing blue lachenalia in our garden

Postscript: rather than rewriting the same information, I copy below the general info I wrote earlier about the genus of lachenalias:

Lachenalias are South African bulbs, mostly from the Cape Province. Some are very easy to grow, others less so. Naturally the very choice varieties are the ones that are less amenable but that is always the way. Some are desert plants and we struggle with those, but the ones that grow in areas of winter rainfall are generally easy and reliable in our conditions. A few, like L. glaucina, are particularly frost tender. Lachenalias last very well as a cut flower and will out-bloom most other late winter and spring bulbs in the garden. L. bulbifera is already in bloom by the beginning of July while the white L. contaminata flowers through November. A family of easy-care bulbs which gives us a full five months of blooming across the colour spectrum – what is not to like?

Tikorangi Diary: Thursday August 18

The lovely blue Lachenalia glaucina

The lovely blue Lachenalia glaucina

The coldest spell of winter weather we can remember still continues. While Mark was entranced by the unbelievable event of snow falling here on Monday, there is no doubt that the unusual experience of a major hailstorm followed by an exceptionally heavy frost, culminating in snow and a second frost this week has knocked the early magnolia display. Magnolia Lanarth has been particularly badly hit and we may just have to look back to previous years to remind ourselves of how fantastic it usually is. (Check out the Magnolia Diary I kept two years ago). Usually we are peaking with the first flush of magnolias in bloom around now and we have an unsurpassed display of red flowered types at this time. Not yet. Many of the new cultivars set flower buds down the stem so will open fresh blooms but it appears that we will be particularly grateful for the second peak we get in early September with the mid season varieties, including the magnificent Iolanthe.

With the threat of frost, I have upon a couple of occasions rushed out with sheets of newspaper to cover the planting of Lachenalia glaucina that we have in the open. Sheets of newspaper work because if they blow off in the night, it means we have sufficient wind to disperse the frost. We grow a wide range of lachenalia in the garden to give us flowers over many months and only a few are vulnerable to cold temperatures in our conditions – glaucina is one. It is a lovely thing and for the first time in years, we have pots of it for sale ($10). They are only just starting to put up their flower spikes so I had to resort to a photo from previous years. Lachenalias come in blues, lilac, pink, red, yellow, orange, green, white and various colour mixes – we have available for purchase the red bulbifera, white contaminata, blue glaucina, yellow reflexa hybrid and an odd, predominantly green form of aloides.

We are open for plant sales every Friday and Saturday (other days by appointment) and we have Eftpos here but we only sell to personal customers. Sorry, no mailorder. If you want to check what else we have available, check our Plant Sales